


Intermission

by derryday



Series: Mission Parameters [1]
Category: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Body Modification, Cyborgs, F/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 23:33:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13351818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derryday/pseuds/derryday
Summary: Sarif Industries never slept.It was almost 2am, long past normal work hours. The lobby was dark and deserted, the skyscrapers dotted only with softly pulsing ambient lights, not the glaring brightness of hard work behind office windows. No smokers stood under the scraggly trees by the lobby.





	Intermission

Sarif Industries never slept.

It was almost 2am, long past normal work hours. The lobby was dark and deserted, the skyscrapers dotted only with softly pulsing ambient lights, not the glaring brightness of hard work behind office windows. No smokers stood under the scraggly trees by the lobby. 

Even the sky was dark, devoid of VTOLs. Slow clouds of Detroit's fumes and smog crawled across the powdery darkness.

But inside, the building's gleaming heart kept beating. The labs were bright as day, filled to the brim with their habitual whir-clang, hum and chatter. Sleek glass elevators still shot up and down the facade, spewing gaggles of white-coated scientists into the corridors.

Amidst the darkened offices and hallways, the cafeteria was an island of light and noise. The cooks had long gone home, but the vending machines were still in use. Small throngs of technicians stood around waiting for their turn.

Adam walked up to one, blinking into its neon-colored hum, and bought a can of coke. A group of young lab assistants trailed past him, nodding to him one by one, never pausing in their discussion. They looked far too awake and alert for 2am. The vending machine rumbled as it cycled his drink through to the slot at the bottom. The can was cool and damp in his palm.

On the far side of the room, the TV was on but turned down. Eliza Cassan's painted lips were moving near-soundlessly; Adam only heard a vague murmur over the pockets of chatter in the room. Nobody was really watching anyway. A few tired pilots stood hollow-eyed around the screen, papercupped drink in hand, and stared at the white writing that scrolled past below Eliza's manicured hands.

Malik had sat down in a corner, in their habitual spot, her back to the room. The exhausted slump of her shoulders looked outright unnatural. A current usually sparked under her skin, a faithful exuberant energy that was as much a part of her as her short hair. But now it was muted, colorless and anemic in the cool glow of the overhead lights.

Her back was to the room, leaving the bench seat open for him. A conscious choice, he was sure, although his sunglasses hid the way his eyes always roamed across the crowd, checking the exits. Malik noticed this stuff, and adjusted accordingly without fuss or comment, the same way she'd begun stocking her VTOL with CyberBoost energy bars ever since he'd come back.

And now she left him the seat with its back securely to the wall. Even bone-tired, she was thoughtful like that.

"Hey," Malik said, when he slid into the bench seat. Her smile was blurry. Bruised-looking shadows creased under her eyes. Belatedly she gestured to the seat. "Sit with me, Spy Boy."

Delayed reaction times, lack of fine motor control... they'd been on their feet and in the air too long. Even her neural enhancements could no longer keep up, struggling to push back the exhaustion that hung about her like a suffocating shroud.

Adam set down his soda. Condensation immediately beaded on the formica tabletop. Behind his glasses, he couldn't help but stare. It was the first time he had seen Malik in civilian clothes. She looked odd without the orange and white flight suit that forced her into straight-backed stiffness, with the thick protective padding sewn along the line of her spine.

Now, she was slouching in her chair, one elbow propped up, the rise of her shoulder tugging her posture into a lopsided sprawl. She wore a light blue shirt with a faded LIMB symbol on the left side. The collar looked soft and crumpled from too many laundry cycles.

"You look tired," Adam said, when it seemed like too much time had gone by in silence.

Malik rolled her eyes, but blinked too slowly, sticky fatigue weighing down her eyelids. "Tell me something I don't know."

She looked at him, searching his face. Her gaze focused visibly, pupils contracting a little. "And _you_ look way too awake," she said. "Aug thing?"

"Cop thing," Adam corrected, somewhat amused despite himself. "SWAT team commanders keep odd hours. I also slept on the flight."

"Traitor," Malik yawned, not bothering to bring up a hand to cover her mouth.

He cracked open his soda, listening to the tinny fizz. The can had not dented at all in his grip. His palm was molded perfectly to the chilly cylindrical shape. It had been a long time since he'd squeezed too hard around something, or had the grip of his fingers twitch open to drop what he'd been holding on the floor.

The soda's artificial sweet flavor burst on his tongue. It was odd, he thought, grimacing at the taste, that it just... didn't bother him when Malik mentioned his "aug thing".

In a city of covert glances and silent, lingering stares behind his back, her straightforwardness was an unexpected, welcome reprieve. Right on his first day back she'd done it, fixed him with dark inquisitive eyes and asked about the surgeries. Not because she'd been sent by Sarif to scope out his recovery process, but of her own accord.

Unlike the receptionists' wide-eyed looks, there was nothing morbid about her curiosity. It was as streamlined and direct as the rest of her. 

And wasn't that something. Back when he'd walked out of the hospital, he never would have guessed that there'd be a type of questions that didn't hurt.

Malik stared for a while at her drink before taking a slow, meditative sip. Adam half expected her to drop the can into her lap, but her fingers managed to hold on, though they shook. She set it down and looked at it some more.

Finally she said, with a vague surprise like she'd only just noticed, "I'm so tired I could sleep for a week."

Adam hid a sympathetic wince. It was so strange to see fierce, perky Malik like this, pale and washed out, with her rumpled shirt and the deep shadows around her eyes. She looked-- soft, and tired, her short hair standing up in greasy tufts around her ears.

Somewhere down deep, the sight itched and pulled at him. It felt not unlike a healing scab. He wanted to put her into a soft armchair in a dim room and stand guard outside the door, personally tell Sarif where he could stick his work ethic when he came calling. He wanted to tell her that she was done, she could rest, he'd find someone else to fly him.

In the end, he did neither of those things. He said, "I think Sarif's going to send us out soon."

Malik grimaced and drained her drink in two long swallows. She rubbed both hands across her face and hair, actually swaying a little without her elbow's propping support. "Well," she mumbled into her hands, "we'll have a proper burial at sea then."

She put both palms flat on the table, as if she needed all her upper body strength to get up. "Come on," she said. "I need to wake up."

The helipad was deserted at this hour. Even the guards were off shift. Some thoughtful soul had turned the flood lights back on, bathing Malik's sleek, shiny VTOL in yellowish light.

They stood just by the doors, leaning side by side against the wall. Malik was breathing in great gulps of air, perhaps hoping that the cold would make her less tired. She had folded her arms across her chest against the chill, but made no move to put her long sleeves back on.

When she'd stood up, Adam had seen that she hadn't changed into civilian clothing as he'd thought; she'd just pulled down the top half of her flight suit and tied the sleeves around her waist. The fabric bunched oddly around the padding in the back.

Adam looked up at the dark sky, watched his breath condense. He felt wide awake. He had dozed on the flight back from Hengsha, but like Malik, he hadn't slept in about 36 hours. Perhaps that was an "aug thing" after all, a Sentinel feature nobody had bothered to tell him about--needing less sleep when it counted.

Malik's head kept drooping forward, her breathing deepening, before she caught herself with a little gasp and straightened up. Adam watched this for about fifteen minutes. Then, when the cold air seemed to have no rousing effect, he said, "You could sleep in my office."

Malik looked up at him. Her eyes were cloudy, unfocused, until she made a frowning effort to look at Adam and not at the shining glass door beside him.

"Huh?" she mumbled, and worked her jaw for a moment as if to remind the muscles how to form words. "Don't you wanna sleep too?"

Too late, Adam realized that if Malik wanted a quiet place to catch some shut-eye, her own office would have been the first and obvious choice. He cleared his throat. "No, I'm good," he said.

He should have offered to walk her to her own office, and now that he had not, he had knocked himself off-kilter. Adam hesitated, then said, "There's a couch."

"Oh my God," Malik said. Her eyes drooped shut. A second passed, and another, until she finally forced them open again. "That sounds great. I'd kill for just five minutes laying down."

"Come on, then," Adam said, relieved that she just seemed drowsily grateful. Then again, even if Malik had wanted to read some subtext into his offer, she was in no state to tease him for his misstep.

Beyond the cafeteria's bright bustle, the hallway was dark. The floor gleamed wetly. A faint citrusy smell of cleaning solution hung in the air. Only a handful of the ambient lamps were on, casting an uncertain yellowish glow. Their shadows lengthened, shrunk and wandered in the intermittent light.

Malik was bumping into him on every second step. At first Adam had periodically touched his fingers to her back to steady her. Finally he just left his palm resting there, on her ribcage just below her shoulders.

He looked at her, appraising, checking for any nonverbal cues that his touch was not welcome. His synthetic vision produced an image of her that was sharper and smoother than anything that flesh-and-blood eyes could've seen in the low light. But in Malik's face he found nothing but grey exhaustion.

Adam felt her shirt move under his hand, smoothing over her warm skin and catching slightly on something harder, a strip of stiff cloth. It took him a moment to realize he was touching the clasp of her bra through her shirt.

He cursed the extraordinary sensitivity of his fingertips. He was almost sure he had no business feeling the thick, elastic fabric of Malik's underwear, even through her LIMB clinic shirt. 

But even if his hand had still been flesh, the nerves would've sent this to his brain too: the two little nubs where small metal hooks held the clasp together, and the way Malik was leaning into his touch, swaying as she mechanically put one foot in front of the other, trusting him not to let her fall.

Adam's office was just as he had left it: folders and e-books, a smell of stale electronics as his computer silently protested the long, long wait in sleep mode. Without the lights from the lobby's towering holoscreens, it was almost completely dark. Some sheets of old-fashioned paper lay scattered across his desk, reflecting the faint yellow glow that trickled in under the door.

He stepped over a half-unpacked cardboard box and clicked on the desk lamp. Malik exhaled a gusty sigh of relief, and made a slightly unsteady beeline for the couch.

He had no blankets, and the air was warm, but... Adam opened his filing cabinet, automatically putting up a hand to stop the mess on the top shelf from spilling out. Behind him, both of Malik's boots hit the floor with muffled thumps. He rummaged around, plastic clattering and paper crinkling, until his fingers brushed something soft.

He pinched the soft, yielding feeling and pulled, and it was the old hoodie he'd been looking for, washed-out black with a faded University of Phoenix logo emblazoned across the front.

He turned around to the couch. Malik had her hips in the air, squirming out of her uniform.

Adam threw the hoodie in her general direction and took the distance to the door in three long steps, eyes firmly on the desk, the floor, _anywhere_ else. He said, all in one breath, "I'm just gonna... you... I'll go and... come wake you if..."

Malik laughed drunkenly. "No need to run, big guy. I'm decent, see?"

Adam gave her a single, apprehensive glance from the corner of his eye. She wore gray tights under the flight suit, with glaringly pink stripes running up the seams. 

Malik grinned and wiggled her socked toes at him, then touched the washed-out hoodie with a drowsy hum.

"Alright," Adam said, uselessly. He felt too big for the room, huge and unwieldy and just _standing_ there by the door like a discarded piece of furniture. "I'm gonna... I'll go have some coffee and wake you when Sarif calls us."

"Won't you--uhhh-- stay?" Malik groaned, through a jaw-cracking yawn. She blinked a few times; then, with a bashful smile, she realized what she'd just said. "Sorry. My brain to mouth filter's pretty much shot."

"That's okay," Adam said. He cleared his throat. "Get some sleep."

"Copy that," Malik said. She tipped sideways on the couch, all but falling.

The front of the hoodie bulged strangely as she pulled it over her head. She squirmed, one knee digging into the back of the couch, struggling to get her tired limbs to cooperate. 

Adam caught a glimpse of bronzed skin when her rumpled shirt rode up. He booked it out of there, closing the door on the light.

In the cafeteria, the lab assistants were still at it, a tight cluster of technobabble, their drinks growing cold. One can of soda had been knocked over and left a sizeable puddle on the floor, but nobody had noticed.

Sipping a paper cup of shitty vending machine coffee, the thought came back to him. Why wasn't he more tired? His days at the precinct had left him well used to long hours. But no one should've been able to subsist on such little sleep for as long as he had.

Adam leaned back into the bench, the same spot where he always sat with Malik, and winced when the straps of his body armor dug into his shoulders. He felt no tiredness. Some tension had settled in his shoulders--he felt a bit like an over-stretched rubber band, but it was nothing he couldn't push past.

And even that did not feel right. It didn't feel _real._ If anything, it was more of a psychological reaction to seeing Malik's utter, sallow exhaustion--a Pavlovian reflex that produced in him some echo of fatigue.

He studied the dregs of his coffee. The paper cup dented against his fingers. Then again, even with human hands he would've been leaving imprints in the flimsy material.

He recalled clearly what it felt like: that leaden, grumpy impatience that descended upon him, as thoughts unraveled like fraying threads. Malik had been running on fumes and determination. He was sure that if he hadn't taken her to his office, she would've fallen asleep right in the middle of the brightly lit cafeteria, just tipped backwards out of her chair as her body gave up the fight.

Adam hadn't so much as felt the urge to yawn since they'd touched down. Here was, with his customary coffee, but he had no idea if he even needed the caffeine. It was habit more than an actual craving that'd propelled him towards the vending machine.

Was there even an end to this new body's endurance, or was he simply no longer capable of tiring? Would the Sentinel implant just keep him going and going, so long as he consumed enough protein bars to feed his advanced metabolism?

He let out a long sigh and rubbed his forehead--right where the weirdly smooth hexagon-shaped indent sat, where he sometimes felt a phantom ache when he woke in the morning. 

This was exactly why he'd kept to a strict chemically-aided sleep schedule since that day he'd walked, weak-kneed and sore, out of the hospital for the last time.

It was grating enough to see the evidence of what had happened to him stare back at him in the mirror every morning. He had been trying to just-- _witness_ it, dispassionately cataloguing the black frames around his eyes like a new scrap of evidence from a crime scene.

But _thinking_ about it... well. He'd been doing an okay job at avoiding that, alone in his new apartment, surrounded by cardboard boxes and cheap cereal.

Being here, feeling the stares and curious whispers of his coworkers, was digging it all up, like a sour, half-digested meal that refused to stay down. 

Now that he was actually exerting his-- body, this half-machine, beyond simple physical therapy, he'd started _noticing_ things. And that got him thinking. 

And right there, something primal and deep-seated just-- flinched away. It was one thing to know that he was different now--another thing entirely to _feel_ it with every breath. It was like stumbling around in a dark room that should've been a safe haven, as familiar as the back of his hand, and finding the furniture rearranged. Every bump, every bruise in the dark, brought that sickening surge closer to the surface, congealing into a dull, uncomprehending revulsion. It was like a pull on an old muscle that slowly cramped tighter. Eventually, it'd lock up.

And he did not want to be here when that happened. Somewhere, anywhere but here. He wanted--

He _wanted_ the fatigue, the dragging feet and the sticky-eyed drowsiness, the weight on his lungs that pushed every breath out longer. 

He wanted to go back.

Malik got about four hours. Then Adam slipped back into his office, his infolink still crackling with a last second of feedback from Sarif's call. 

Outside, the sky was beginning to brighten with dawn, the dark indigo turning a paler dark blue, yellowed by Detroit's canopy of artificial light.

The desk lamp was still on. Malik had managed to squirm into the hoodie after all. She lay curled on her side, one foot hanging off the couch, with the other leg tucked into the hoodie's bulky front, distorting the shape of the logo.

In sleep, her mouth hung slightly open. One hand rested half-curled by the pillow she'd tucked under her shoulders, the fingers bent as though remembering the controls of her VTOL.

Under the faded university logo, her flank rose and fell with her breath. Adam crouched down by the couch. He didn't want to loom over her, startle her out of sleep. 

Her face was slack. Not even her eyes moved under her lids. Something in him shook to see her like this--a rusty hinge creaking open in his chest, just because she was resting on his couch, unselfconsciously asleep.

"Malik," he whispered. No response.

"Malik," he repeated, a little louder, though he suddenly wanted nothing more than to let her sleep, Sarif's temper tantrums bedamned. "Faridah."

Malik grunted, bleary dark eyes blinking open. She stared at him, perhaps studying her own reflection in his sunglasses.

For a moment there was nothing in her face but groggy exhaustion. Then she frowned at him, the clingy tendrils of sleep snapping free, and said, "What's wrong?"

Adam sat back on his haunches. A small, disbelieving spark of irritation died almost as soon as it'd come. How could she read him like this?

The glasses hid his eyes and heavy body armor was strapped to his front. What was it about his body language-- _this_ body, with its stilted new dialect--that gave it away for her? How could she just _see,_ in that vulnerable second after waking, that her tiredness had stirred that unexamined wound in him?

"I just talked to Sarif," Adam said. His voice was a rough scratch in his throat. "We're going back to Hengsha. Wheels up in ten."

"Ten!" Malik said, and jerked upright at once. Her hair was flattened on one side, sticking up on the other.

She ran her fingers through it, trying to comb the mess back into some semblance of order. "Hengsha?" she repeated. Adam nodded.

Malik sighed, but she finally untangled her legs and put her socked feet on the floor. She looked at her hands, turned them over to examine the lightly veined backs and the creases in her palms.

She held her hands out to him, and he leaned forward before he thought better of it. Malik wiggled her fingers. "See, no shakes."

Adam blinked slowly. He was still caught in that aborted reflex--he'd almost taken her offered hands. Almost _touched her._ "What?"

Malik leaned over the back of the couch to retrieve her rumpled flight suit. "I had some crazy tremors earlier," she explained. The pink stripes on her tights disappeared under the insulated orange material. "My neural enhancements aren't supposed to let that happen, but it does if I'm tired enough. Now I got just enough sleep to take the edge off."

She stood and shrugged the top half back on, expertly shouldering her way into the stiff padding and zipping it shut. 

On shaky legs, Adam rose. His heart pounded fast and hard. She hadn't so much as flinched when his black metal fingers had come up to intercept her own. They stood so close that she could've reached out and touched _him._

When she looked at him, her eyes were clearer than they'd been all night. There was still a sallow look to her cheeks and bags under her eyes, but the heaviest of the fatigue had lifted.

"Hengsha," Malik said again, and tilted her head at the door. "Fill me in?"

Dawn brightened the sky over Detroit. Neon lights competed with the softer blues and purples that mingled with the indigo of night. His security personnel was back at the helipad. Both men looked half awake at best, cradling paper cups of coffee that released fragrant steam into the air.

Upstairs and in the sub-level labs, the transition from night to day would be barely noticeable. Some techs went home and others took over their shifts, a seamless routine aided by generous cups of freshly brewed coffee. Scientists subsisted on their own genius and fumes from their petri dishes, and would keep going until the late morning, when exhaustion finally caught up with them.

The labs would be as bright as ever, the computers' hum and whir barely even hitching as shifts changed and new personnel replaced the old, fresh fuel in the ever-chugging machinery of invention and progress.

About half of Malik had disappeared into the cockpit. She was warming up the turbines, tapping one-handed on the controls, performing pre-flight checks that she could probably do in her sleep. 

One foot dangled out of the open hatch. Adam looked at that foot, the thick profile of her boots, but didn't really see it.

Realization struck like an electric shock, leaving him dazed, every sense dulled: the heart of Sarif Industries was just like him. 

The labs with their shiny-smooth, whirring machinery--they just kept going, unaffected by the organic trickle of shift changes as the engineers tired and techs guzzled energy drinks in a fruitless effort to keep up. His altered physiology, too, burned bright like a star long after Malik's body and mind had been overwhelmed. 

Would the labs keep running, no matter what happened? Would the tiny cogs and servos in his limbs turn and turn and carry his strung-out mind in an endless spiral, denying him even something as quintessentially human as exhaustion?

"--Jensen?"

Malik stood right in front of him, leaning into his personal space. Adam nearly stepped back from the sudden proximity; at some point she'd climbed out of her VTOL and walked over to him and he hadn't even noticed.

"Fly Girl to Spy Boy," she said. Concerned eyes peered up at him. "Come in, Spy Boy."

Despite himself, he gave her a weary smile. "I read you."

"Cloud front ahead," Malik said, as though they were up in the air on Detroit's flight comm channels. "What's got you so wound up?"

Adam barely managed to hide his flinch. Wound up--like an automaton, or some old-fashioned mechanical clock. 

Malik looked at him, guileless and searching. She hadn't meant it like that, he knew that, it was an unfortunate choice of words and nothing more. But it still settled uncomfortably behind his ribs, not a blow but an echo of one, like phantom pain.

"Nothing," he said again, a meaningless repetition. He nodded at the VTOL. "Is she ready?"

A pause. Malik fixed him with a long, searching stare. Unbidden, the image came to him again, the way she'd lain on his couch, face slack with sleep. "Yeah," she said, finally.

"We should get going." This time, when he mustered up a smile for her, he put more effort into it. He stepped away towards the back of the VTOL. "Clear skies, and all that."

Malik stopped him with a hand on his arm. 

The touch was unexpected enough that Adam froze completely. Even his breath stopped. Malik leaned into him, gently squeezing his arm, the thick fabric of his coat pressing against sensor arrays.

A shiver of unease gripped him. Could she feel the bundled strings of carbon fibre that passed for his muscles now? Maybe there was a Typhoon port right under her palm, and in a moment she'd recoil from SI's newest and deadliest weapon--

But Malik just looked at him, her mouth pinched with worry. She seemed on the verge of speaking, but something stopped the words right on her tongue. She stared at his sunglasses as though she could truly see his eyes there, instead of her own reflection.

"Thanks for the nap," she said at last, oddly intent. She was close enough that he could smell her, engine oil and sweat and the struggling remains of deodorant. "It helped. Really."

She looked like she wanted to say more, but in the end just gave him a slightly awkward smile. She patted his arm once more, then her touch trailed away.

Adam flew frequently, and Malik was a good pilot--the best, really. But lift-off usually had him repressing a mild surge of nausea. This time, although the turbines roared and the hull shook as Malik guided them into the brightening sky, he barely felt the swooping sensation.

The VTOL soared through the air. Thin clouds of pollution drifted past the small windows. On his arm, Adam could still feel Malik's hand--an echo so intense that he almost expected to see her still next to him. His artificial nerves had translated the pressure of her palm into an odd prickle. It lingered now, clinging like sticky residue.

In the small passenger compartment, with Malik's voice filtering over the comm as she hailed the ATC tower, he could breathe easier. Machinery hummed all around him, his seat vibrating faintly.

Up ahead, the sun rose over Detroit, golden through the mist. His glasses filtered out most of the glow. Adam leaned back and breathed out, the seat belt a familiar pressure across his chest and stomach. 

Unobserved, with the SI headquarters falling away beneath him, it didn't seem to matter quite so much that he had no reason to let himself relax. He could've sat unblinking and alert for another 36 hours, mapping out every cloud with his sharp, enhanced vision. 

Adam shut his eyes anyway. The remains of Malik's touch still fizzed along under his coat. With the hum of the turbines, it guided him into some semblance of rest.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been collecting dust on my hard drive for a while, which is a shame since I love Adam/Malik, but now I've finally started playing Mankind Divided and it's really kickstarted my inspiration!
> 
> I know the missions probably weren't this back-to-back in Human Revolution. Shh.
> 
> "Mission Parameters" is going to be a series of loosely connected one-shots about the ongoing adventures of Fly Girl and Spy Boy. I have some ideas but if there's anything you'd like to see, feel free to pitch the idea my way & I'll see what I can do. ^_^


End file.
